I am new to bass resource (as a member) but far from new as a reader...check the site almost everyday. Love the personal videos from real fisherman, not necessarily big name pros, to see what everyone else prefers fishing and how. A dropshot vid from flkmaster on youtube was really helpful w/ having me expand my drop shot fishing from not just deep clear open water situations.
Where I live we have every kind of lake/pond and TONS AND TONS of them...but not a lot of BIG water @ all...our biggest natural lake is only like 4500 acres and we have a reservoir that's 27,000 but other than that a "Tournament lake" around here is 600 acres and up...so some of the water gets pressured, but there's SO MANY hidden gems that there's always an un-pressured option. Just in my region (Cape Cod) which isn't even an 1/5th of the state (size wise) we have a pond or lake to fish for every day of the year. That's just the listed ones. But in my particular region Striped Bass are king in Summer so it helps unpressure our ponds a bit. People love Saltwater. Our ponds around here are general clear, deeper natural kettle ponds with a good mix of LM and SM. If you wanna fish tourneys here you need to know how to catch both.
Like I said I've been fishing since I was 5 and grew up right on lakes...My father started me fishing with nightcrawlers, catching hornpout( our catfish), white perch, blue gill...but from the moment I caught my first bass (it was a smallmouth) I was hooked on it. Thru everything, I've always come back to one thing: bass fishing. I have been seriously targetting and being obsessed with Bass since I was 7 or 8...With a brother that grew up on lake Michigan that's much older than me and who is an avid tourney angler, I learned fast and young. Now I get much more time on the water than he can and beat him on the regular lol...
I consider myself a very well-rounded fisherman due to the myriad of lakes and amazing mix of "types" of lakes we have...There's many ponds that are chains that attach and 1 pond is a shallow, weedy, stump filled flipping paradise with bruiser largemouth, the next a deep, ledge-filled, rocky bottom, clear water pond with great rock piles and offshore structure, and huge largies and smallies, then the next being a mix of the two...We have shallow flipper/pitcher paradises...we have deep, ULTRA ULTRA ULTRA clear smallmouth ponds, We have a few good rivers...we've got it all so it's a great place to become well-rounded.
I am probably best @ finesse fishing, a drop shot is not EVER not tied on my rod unless we're fishing a 5ft. deep flipping/pitching matt/tules field...BUT My favorite fishing is flippping and pitching to structure in heavy cover...A few years ago I found myself just being "too much" of a finesse fisherman and made myself improve my jig/flipping/pitching/punching skills...since t hen it's been hard to put down, I used to have 5 spinning and 5 casting on deck...Now it's 8 casting, 2-3 spinning. I am always @ home w/ a spinning rod in my hands and it's made me very versatile. A lot of tourney guys out here don't know how to do ANYTHING but fliip and ***** to shoreline structure...their frustration is so evident watching the finesse guys fish off their sonars and go to deep water and pull in nice bags when t hey cannot buy a bite. Versatility is KEY.
I hope to be involved as much as possible in these forums, I'll provide any help I can and learn from the slew of amazing fisherman this forum obviously has!. Thanks so m uch and I'd love to hear a little bit about anyone willing to share!!!
